In a familiar scenario involving the purchase of goods or services, a buyer or customer presents a seller or merchant with a payment device, typically a debit or credit card having, e.g., a magnetically encoded strip on its surface, and the card is “swiped” or scanned with another device typically provided by the seller, e.g., a “card reader.” The card reader reads from the card the identity and buyer's account number of the source of funds that the buyer wishes to use to pay for the goods, and is also typically pre-provisioned by the seller with the identity and account number of the acquirer depository into which the seller wishes the payment funds to be transferred.
The reader device then establishes contact, typically via a data communication network, e.g., the internet or a public switched telephone network (PSTN), with the issuer source of payment funds, which may be a bank, credit union, credit provider, such as Visa or MasterCard, or a payment service provider, such as Intuit's Quicken Bill Pay or eBay's PayPal payment services. The payment source then prompts the buyer for the entry, typically by the pressing of keys of a keypad, of a unique, secret password and/or personal identification number (PIN) associated with the buyer's account, and if the payment request is deemed to be authentic, and if sufficient funds are available in the buyer' account, the transaction is then cleared or settled, i.e., the designated buyer's and seller's accounts are respectively debited and credited with the amount of the payment.
The foregoing “cashless,” “checkless” or “electronic” payment scenario, although relatively convenient and secure for both buyers and sellers, presents a drawback for those buyers who, for a variety of reasons, e.g., accounting, tax, legal, or other considerations, wish to make selected purchases with funds drawn from different payment sources. For example a buyer with a small business may wish to fund purchases made for business purposes with funds drawn from a first source, and to fund purchases made for personal use from a second payment source. To accomplish this, the buyer is forced into the relatively inconvenient arrangement of having to carry and use two different payment devices, e.g., debit or credit cards, each having an associated funding source and PIN number.
A need therefore exists for systems and methods that enable a buyer to make a payment to a seller from a selected one of a number of available funding sources conveniently and with the use of only a single payment device, such as a debit or credit card.